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Twitter to Support ‘Do not Track’ Feature in its Service

Twitter, the micro-blogging giant on Thursday announced it will feature a ‘Do Not Track’ option that will help its users opt-out of third-party tracking. The announcement came at a conference in New York on Thursday morning after the company joined Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox web browser.

Currently, many websites like Facebook and Google prefer collecting data about their visitors and use it for advertising. They therefore do not support the option. Browsers like Firefox, Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer and Apple Inc.’s Safari do include this feature but rely more on websites to honor the requests.

What does ‘Do not Track’ option do?

Do Not Track option when enabled, blocks third-party cookies used to piece together Internet users’ personal information and online activity. How? It sends a line of code to websites indicating the user does not want to be tracked. That’s it!

The option is considered as a good privacy initiative and is being heavily promoted by the US Federal Trade Commission, online privacy advocates and Mozilla.

How users can implement the ‘Do not Track’ feature in Twitter?

Users can implement the option by simply enabling it in various browsers that offer it. Once enabled, Twitter will stop collecting information/personal data about users via cookies. However, before allowing users to make their own choices about whether or not they would like sites to track their information it is essential that websites agree with the browser first.

Currently, besides Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari support the same feature to some extent. Google says it will roll out the same feature for its Chrome browser by the end of this year.

In a statement on its site, Mozilla appreciated Twitter’s decision. It said, “We’re excited that Twitter now supports Do Not Track and global user adoption rates continue to increase, which signifies a big step forward for Do Not Track and the Web”. Current adoption rates of Do Not Track are 8.6 percent for desktop users and 19 percent for mobile users revealed Mozilla in the end.